Occupy Wall Street is a sign of a new economic order. What comes next?

[PETRUS]

Excerpts:

The systemic problem is obvious. While using very different rhetoric, progressives like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Marxists like Richard Wolff agree, first, that the economy is failing for lack of demand — and, second and most important, that this failure is now “built in” to the system.

*snip*

Over the last three decades, for instance, more workers have become owners of their own companies than are members of unions in the private sector; indeed, 5 million more. Simultaneously, there has been increasing experimentation with unions within such firms, and with new ways to increase participation and control. There are also more than 4,500 nonprofit community development corporations that operate affordable housing and other neighborhood programs. Approximately 130 million Americans are members of co-ops. In Cleveland, an innovative group of linked cooperatives has set new standards for community-building economic change.”Social enterprises” are developing in communities throughout the nation that transform the ownership of capital into businesses, the sole purpose of which is to provide community services.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/04/capitalism_fading_in_the_evolutionary_revolution/singleton

More at the link.

[MADem]

1. More responsive politicians--who serve We, The People, instead of their corporate masters! nt

[PETRUS]

2. One hopes!

It's interesting to consider the various alternative business arrangements taking place on a small scale.

[Zorra]

5. If OWS can coerce Congress into passing a comprehensive foolproof Constitutional Amendment

that outlaws corporate personhood, the Citize ns United decision, all lobbying and donations to political campaigns and all elected officials, it might make it possible to actually begin the process of genuine representative democratic government.

That is one possible way to get there by using the system.

Otherwise, maybe we can just do our own thing and when everyone sees how awesome it is they will abandon the system and join us in starting a far better way of doing things.

[JDPriestly]

3. It might develop into some sort of private, non-governmental

cooperative organization. The corporate form of business organization has not always existed in the form that it now exists.

No reason why some new form could not come into being -- worker-owned and managed businesses. Or businesses that are built on the investment of everybody who works for the company. Or maybe a big portion of the start-up companies funded by the sweat equity and unpaid wages of all of the people working for the companies.

I would not expect a socialist system in the historical sense, rather groups of people working together to create and produce things. The people working together under this vision would include the janitors as well as the equivalent for the system of MBAs and accountants.

A company run so that every employee has a vote and a voice and so that the "bosses" explain their ideas in a way that brings everybody who works there into the picture and, so to speak, on board, would probably work well in many although not all kinds of businesses.

I'd like to see a janitorial service, for example, that was run by the employees top to bottom. I suspect they would give better service than your run-of-the-mill service. The ownership society is not a bad concept. Depends on who really owns the ownership of the society.

My husband reminds me that this is being tried in Brazil and Argentina.

A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which managers and administration is elected by every worker-owner, and finally it can refer to a situation in which managers are considered, and treated as, workers of the firm. In traditional forms of worker cooperative, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual, collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis).<1> A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce own shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

I was thinking of the old farmers' cooperatives. But South Americans are using the concept in the industrial setting.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. I've seen video of co op companies where people look really happy...definitely an idea to examine!

[deaniac21]

6. More of the same.

[PETRUS]

7. There's a good chance you're right.

But acquiescence is SURE to produce more of the same, so...

[Dont call me Shirley]

8. We need democratic workplaces, employee owned